Sonic Colors Ultimate preview

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Sonic Colors: Ultimate feels best when information technology's focused on going fast

I desire whole hog, not one-half pig

Later a half hr hands-on preview with Sonic Colors: Ultimate, I'm reminded of but how fast the world'south most famous hedgehog actually is. If I'k honest, 30 minutes was nowhere near enough time to become a firm grasp on this garden dweller.

Colors: Ultimate is a remaster of a 2010 platformer originally for the Wii, remastered in time for Sonic's 30th birthday. Information technology was well recieved past fans at the time, so I suppose Hard disk-ifying it now makes sense. But if I pick through the bluish dust left in Sonic Colors Ultimate'southward wake, I'm left with the feeling that I merely prefer the going-fast hedgehog when he's focused on going fast.

eleven years ago, Sonic travelled to Doctor Eggman'south evil theme-park and stopped him from enslaving an alien race of wisps in Sonic Colors. Yous'd await nada less from a hedgehog with such large feet. You go fast; yous collect rings. Sonic. Now Sonic Colors returns, and along with the Ultimate label things await nicer, in that location'southward a new mode, and there's a new wisp ability-upward. In my blitz with the spiny mammal, I didn't go to try out Sonic Colors Ultimate's new mode, or even the new wisp ability-up. I did, however, race through a few of the game's earliest levels, which saw me tear through a tropical resort and a pudding-themed earth.

And just similar in Sonic Colors of old, these levels shift between a side-scrolling and front end-facing perspective. In the latter, you speed through winding sections that wouldn't be out of identify in Mario Kart - or Team Sonic Racing, I suppose. Occasionally y'all hop over barricades, or dodge out the way of nasty robots, or grind your sneakers on a long rail. As you barrel through these levels, a boost meter fills up, which lets you become mega-fast and boom through lines of robots.

These bits are pretty fun, equally you lot really become a sense of footstep and flow. In the hands on it was rare that I ever stopped to nab a special coin or a canister of trapped wisps, so the momentum was forever pushing forwards. And information technology all felt wonderfully smoothen, chaining together these hops and grinds and boosts every bit I careered towards the end line.

Sonic doing a loop the loop in Sonic Colors Ultimate.

Interspersed betwixt these sections are some side-scrolling $.25 too. You'll elegantly transition from charging forwards to charging sideways. That is, if y'all aren't doing a touch of platforming or backtracking. Side scrolling is of grade a classic Sonic style, comparable to what you find in Sonic Mania, where you're jumping on springs to rocket you lot upwardly, or loop-de-looping back through a hidden tunnel to nab that shiny loot.

The switching in Sonic Colors: Ultimate did change things upwardly fairly nicely, and so I wasn't only whizzing through the equivalent of a race track the entire time, but even in half an hour it got a little jarring. I got the sense that I was lurching between two Sonics: ane that wished to go fast, and i that wished to cease and rewind from time to fourth dimension. 1 whizzes down a track, building up momentum, and then the other steps in and slows to a scrap of a crawl (in Sonic terms, at least).

Debating the form of Sonic isn't new. In that location are constant discussions between fans about which eras of Sonic are the all-time, and the blue blur has been in a load of different 2D and 3D platformers in his time. I suppose getting a preview of Colors: Ultimate has just emphasised that it'south weird for a character who has one of the most simple and iconic statements of intent in all of games can also have such an ongoing indentity crunch.

It's not that this all-time of both worlds approach doesn't piece of work. This seems similar a strong HD remaster, it's one of Sonic's about universally liked games, and it still has everything that was popular with fans on its original release. If you already know about Sonic Colors, you probably already know if you'll similar Ultimate. But me? Later on this preview I tin can't shake the feeling that Sonic would be amend off committing to simply one way of going fast.